F26PEOPLE

Internal HR Q&A and policy navigation

A focused assistant employees can ask about HR policies, benefits, time off, expense rules, conduct policies — anything in the employee handbook and surrounding policy documents. Different from C7 (general internal search) and C11 (legal/contract Q&A) in that it's tuned for employee-facing questions: it knows when to give a direct answer and when to route to a People Ops person, it handles sensitive questions (compensation, performance issues, harassment) with appropriate care, and it gives benefit-specific answers that depend on the asker's plan, country, or tenure. The pattern's value is offloading the predictable 70% of HR questions from People Ops while making sure the other 30% reaches a human safely.

WHERE THIS FITS

BUSINESS SHAPES

B2B servicesProfessional servicesProduct companyNon-profit / mission-driven

VOLUME THRESHOLD

Below 50 employee headcount a month, the payback rarely earns the build. Patterns this shape reliably pay back at 500+.

REQUIREMENTS · 6 REQUIRED

Requirements describe capabilities the pattern needs in your environment, not the vendors you must buy. Any system that fills a requirement satisfies it — that’s what makes the catalog portable across the long tail of SMB tooling.

hr_policy_corpus
REQUIREDREADcorpus
The authoritative HR policy and benefits documentation.
DATA SHAPE
Employee handbook, benefits summaries, country- or location-specific policies, structured FAQ.
COMMONLY FILLED BY
- employee handbook in the company portal
- benefits documentation from providers
- structured policy library maintained by People Ops
employee_context_lookup
REQUIREDREADrequest
Who's asking: their location, tenure, employment type, benefits enrollment, manager. Critical because answers vary by these.
DATA SHAPE
Per-employee profile with location, role, employment classification, benefits enrolled, manager, tenure.
COMMONLY FILLED BY
- HR system with employee profiles
- benefits administration system
- directory with employment metadata
conversation_surface
REQUIREDREAD + WRITErequest
Where employees ask. Has to be low-friction and private.
DATA SHAPE
Conversational thread between the employee and the assistant.
COMMONLY FILLED BY
- chat DM with the assistant
- employee portal chat panel
- dedicated HR app the firm provides
sensitive_topic_router
REQUIREDREAD + WRITErequest
Detects when the question touches sensitive territory — compensation specifics, performance issues, harassment, mental health, legal concerns — and routes to a human appropriately.
DATA SHAPE
Topic classifier with sensitivity flags and routing rules per topic and per location (e.g. EEO-protected categories differ by jurisdiction).
COMMONLY FILLED BY
- sensitivity rule library co-authored with People Ops and legal
- topic classifier trained on past inquiries
- structured escalation rules
people_ops_escalation_route
REQUIREDWRITEevent
Where escalated cases reach a human, with appropriate sensitivity to the topic and the employee's privacy.
DATA SHAPE
Per-case: employee identifier (or anonymous if appropriate), topic, what was asked, suggested handler, suggested response time.
COMMONLY FILLED BY
- ticket created in the People Ops case management system
- DM to a designated HR business partner
- structured case in the HR support tool
answer_quality_feedback
REQUIREDWRITEevent
Per-answer feedback from employees, used to tune accuracy and identify policy gaps.
DATA SHAPE
Per-query: thumbs rating, optional comment, escalation outcome if applicable.
COMMONLY FILLED BY
- thumbs widget after each answer
- follow-up feedback prompt
- monthly People Ops review of low-rated answers

RUNTIME FLOW · 8 STEPS

01
Employee asks a question through the conversation surface
conversation_surface
02
Classify question against the sensitive topic router
sensitive_topic_router
DECISION If sensitive, route to People Ops with appropriate framing and stop answering directly.
03
Look up employee context to know which policies apply
employee_context_lookup
04
Search the HR policy corpus for relevant policies, filtered by location and applicability
hr_policy_corpus
05
Generate a personalized answer grounded on retrieved policies, with explicit citations and a 'this applies because you're in [location]' framing
06
If confidence is low or the question requires interpretation, route to People Ops while explaining to the employee
people_ops_escalation_route
DECISION Honest 'I'm not sure, here's who to ask' beats a confident wrong answer.
07
Deliver answer through the conversation surface with citations
conversation_surface
08
Capture feedback for tuning and gap detection
answer_quality_feedback

EMISSIONS · 3

Structured outputs this pattern produces. Other patterns and client systems can subscribe to them, which is how the catalog composes over time.

hr_question_pattern_signal
What employees actually ask about, aggregated and anonymized.
CONSUMED BY
- People Ops priorities
- policy clarity reviews
- communications planning
policy_gap_signal
Questions the pattern couldn't answer well, surfaced as documentation gaps.
CONSUMED BY
- handbook updates
- benefits documentation refresh
- policy authoring workflows
sensitive_topic_signal
Volume and trend of sensitive topic escalations, aggregated only, useful as a leading indicator of organizational health concerns.
CONSUMED BY
- People Ops leadership
- executive culture reviews